- State Department: US regime to suspend visa processing for 75 nations
Source: Reuters
“The Trump administration is suspending all visa processing for visitors from 75 countries starting January 21, Fox News reported on Wednesday, citing a memo from the U.S. State Department. Somalia, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Thailand are among the affected countries, according to the report. Representatives for the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the reported memo, which Fox News said directs U.S. embassies to refuse visas under existing law while the department reassesses its procedures. No time frame was provided.” (01/14/26)
- House GOP moves to hold Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress in Epstein probe
Source: Axios
“House Oversight Republicans will begin contempt of Congress proceedings against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after she failed to appear for a deposition Wednesday as part of the committee’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Both Clintons will face contempt of Congress proceedings — a rarely used congressional enforcement tool. … The Oversight panel will vote to hold Hillary and Bill Clinton in contempt next Wednesday, Comer said. Criminal contempt of Congress carries a maximum penalty of up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000, though not every witness who defies a subpoena is referred for prosecution.” (01/14/26)
- UK: Regime waters down mandatory digital ID scheme after backlash
Source: ABC News
“The British government has watered down plans for mandatory digital identification cards, a contentious idea it had touted as a way to help control immigration. It’s the latest policy U-turn by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s embattled center-left government, which is under fire from both opposition politicians and governing Labour Party lawmakers. Officials confirmed Wednesday that it won’t be compulsory for citizens and residents to show a digital ID card in order to get a job, ditching a key plank of the policy announced in September. … Britain has not had compulsory identity cards for ordinary citizens since shortly after World War II, and the idea has long been contentious. Civil rights campaigners argue it infringes personal liberty and puts people’s information at risk.” (01/14/26)
- FBI searches reporter’s home
Source: The Hill
“The home of a Washington Post reporter was searched by the FBI as part of an investigation by the bureau into the leaking of classified documents tied to President Trump’s efforts to trim the size of the federal government. The search, which was first reported by The New York Times and the Post itself, came at the home of journalist Hannah Natanson …. Natanson was home at the time of the search, the Post reported, and the FBI seized her two laptops, cell phone and a Garmin watch during the operation. A warrant tied to the search noted the investigation was focused on a government system administrator in Maryland who ‘has a top secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and his basement,’ the outlet reported.” (01/14/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5688345-fbi-searches-washington-post-reporter
- Widespread Verizon outage prompts emergency alerts in Washington, New York City
Source: NBC News
“Verizon said on Wednesday that its wireless service was suffering an outage impacting cellular data and voice services. The nation’s largest wireless carrier said that its ‘engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly.’ Verizon’s statement came after a swath of social media comments directed at Verizon, with users saying that their mobile devices were showing no bars of service or ‘SOS,’ indicating a lack of connection. Verizon, which has more than 146 million customers, appears to have started experiencing services issues around 12:00 p.m. ET, according to comments on social media site X. … In Washington, D.C., the District’s official emergency notification system sent out a message to residents saying that the Verizon outage was ‘nationwide.’ … New York City’s Office of Emergency Management also said it was aware of the outage without mentioning Verizon by name.” (01/14/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/verizon-outage-new-york-washington-rcna254050
- Donations Surge for Ford Worker Who Triggered Trump With “Pedo Protector”
Source: The Daily Beast
“A fundraiser for a man who was suspended for calling President Donald Trump a ‘pedophile protector’ has raised more than $222,000 in just a few hours. Ford factory worker TJ Sabula was recorded getting into a confrontation with Trump during the president’s tour of one of the automaker’s plants in Michigan on Tuesday. Video of the incident shows Trump — who has faced widespread condemnation over his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files — appearing to mouth ‘f— you’ and flip the bird after Sabula is heard calling him a ‘pedophile protector. The worker said he was suspended over the incident but told The Washington Post that he has ‘no regrets whatsoever.'” (01/14/26)
- Trump vs. Free Markets
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille“Whatever debilitating brain parasite burrowed into the gray matter of American politics over the last decade-plus has resulted in some astonishing transformations. One of the biggest has been the reshaping of the once nominally pro-capitalist Republican party into a populist party hostile to free markets. Under President Donald Trump, the GOP increasingly favors the whims of the president and his cronies over the results of voluntary interactions among millions of buyers, producers, and sellers. Most recently, we see this in the form of Trump’s announced intentions to ban some real estate investors from purchasing single-family homes and his proposed cap on credit card interest rates. … as many points of disagreement spark fiery clashes, economics isn’t really a point of contention between the dominant factions of the two main parties. Trump’s Republicans agree with the ‘opposition’ progressive Democrats that the government should be running the economy.” (01/14/26)
- More laws equivalent of more crime
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal“Trying to solve crime with authoritarian government, more laws, and stricter enforcement is like trying to keep someone healthy by stuffing them in a coffin and burying them alive. Yet, this is the first move politicians make when they see a problem. Turning to government and its laws is a sign your society has failed, and the unfortunate fact is that this only causes more crime in the long run. As the Chinese philosopher Laozi pointed out over 2,000 years ago, ‘The more numerous the laws, the more thieves and robbers there will be.’ … Whoever said it, it’s true. It has always been true, and it remains so today. Only, can we finally admit it’s not ‘corruption,’ but government working exactly as designed?” (01/14/26)
- Chicago does not have a single licensed hot dog cart. Here’s why.
Source: Washington Post
by Austin Berg“The home of the Chicago-style hot dog does not have a single food cart licensed to sell hot dogs on city sidewalks, according to a Chicago Policy Center analysis of city data. It sounds unbelievable. But it’s true. This de facto ban speaks to a political structure and culture that still prioritizes who you know, rather than how well you serve customers. For decades, Chicago did not allow food carts of any kind. Brick-and-mortar restaurant interests lobbied city bureaucrats to keep street vendors from legally operating. Meanwhile, vendors were still out selling sliced fruit, tamales and other street food illicitly across the city. … After community pressure, the city created a new license for food carts in 2015. … But nearly a decade later, there are just 14 licensed food carts of any kind in Chicago. Compare that with New York, home to 7,000 licensed food cart vendors.” (01/14/26)
- Patrick Henry Was Right
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson“I don’t know that I’m 100 percent ready to agree with Leighton Woodhouse that ‘the hysterical pussy hats were right,’ but I am very much convinced that the anti-federalists were, and that that fact ultimately is more consequential. One of the arguments put forward to excuse or minimize the aggression — and the brutality — of ICE’s campaign in Minneapolis is that federal agents cannot rely on the cooperation of state and local authorities …. So (goes this argument) rather than ask the local police to intervene when, e.g., protesters partly block a street or otherwise inconvenience federal agents, ICE agents really have no choice but to take aggressive action on their own, and that such action is justified by its necessity. Like so much of what one hears from apologists for Donald Trump and his administration, this is a fundamentally un-American point of view, one that misunderstands the nature of our constitutional order.” (01/14/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/federalism-trump-demagogues-sanctuary-cities-states/
- China’s Rare Earth “Monopoly” — and Why Markets Will Break It
Source: The Daily Economy
by Walter Donway“[T]he United States, long the world’s leading industrial power, has become dependent on the goodwill of a strategic rival for materials central to its economy and its defense. That dependence did not arise because rare earth minerals are scarce. They are not. Nor did it arise because China alone possesses the technical capacity to mine or refine them. It arose from a long chain of economic and political decisions — made largely in free societies — that concentrated production in a country willing to accept costs others would not. Understanding how that happened is essential to understanding why China’s apparent monopoly is far less ‘coercive,’ and far less durable, than it looks.” (01/14/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/chinas-rare-earth-monopoly-and-why-markets-will-break-it/
- It’s Not A Minnesota Problem, It’s A Blue State Problem
Source: The Federalist
by Ben Weingarten“There’s a deeper, darker truth lurking beneath the Somali-dominated [sic], multi-billion-dollar Minnesota welfare fraud schemes that have commanded the attention of federal authorities and stoked nationwide outrage. And it may explain in part why for weeks, Democrats and regime media have been gaslighting the country, casting critics as bigots, and shooting the messengers who sent the long-neglected story viral — and why, now, state and local leaders are trying to turn Minneapolis into a powder keg. These dodges and diversions distract from the fact that the fraud is a feature of what we might call The Blue Model of government. Fueled by the welfare state and increasingly open borders [sic], it is at core about political patronage, profiteering, and plunder. Democrats’ survival depends upon a political-business model of vote-buying via legal and illicit wealth redistribution. Suppressing the Minnesota story is critical.” (01/14/25)
https://thefederalist.com/2026/01/14/its-not-a-minnesota-problem-its-a-blue-state-problem/
- Those who execute military orders carry all the risk
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jon Duffy“The dispute between Sen. Mark Kelly and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is being told as a simple morality play. On one side, the claim that Kelly crossed a line and deserves punishment. On the other, the insistence that Kelly is a hero beyond reproach and that the administration’s response is villainy. Both frames are comforting. Both are wrong. What matters most here is not who appeared righteous or reckless in the moment, but what happens when legality is left unresolved. In this case, junior service members are being placed in the position of exercising legal and moral judgment without meaningful authority, clarity or institutional backing. Those who make decisions remain insulated from consequence; those who execute them carry the risk.” (01/14/26)
- Crocodile Tears for the Iranian People
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment (i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA) are ramping up the U.S. war machine for another military attack on a sovereign and independent nation — this time, Iran. Their rationale? They say that they just want to help the Iranian protestors who are being killed by the Iranian dictatorship and its own national-security establishment. Don’t make me laugh. Come on! Why not the same brutal honesty about Iran as we have seen with Venezuela? At least Trump, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are not justifying their extra-judicial killings on the high seas and their military kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro by claiming to be helping the Venezuelan people.” (01/14/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/01/14/crocodile-tears-for-the-iranian-people/
- You Know They’re Lying About Iran
Source: Caitlyn Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlyn Johnstone“You’ve seen this all before. They run the same script over and over again. You know all the beats. The formula never changes. ‘Oh no, the people in the targeted nation are being oppressed! They need freedom and democracy!’ ‘Hey, I bet we could use our powerful military to help them get the freedom and democracy! Wouldn’t that be swell?’ ‘Oh gosh, there are some people who don’t think we should use our powerful military to help the people in the targeted nation get freedom and democracy! They must have some sinister, suspicious loyalty to the Evil Regime which rules the targeted nation!’ ‘Look, I get that sometimes in the past we have used our powerful military in ways that were mean and unhelpful, but you need to understand that the Evil Regime is also very, very bad.'” (01/15/25)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/01/15/you-know-theyre-lying-about-iran/
- MAGA’S Young, Dumb Future
Source: The Bulwark
by Andrew Egger“It’s not a crime to be young and dumb in America. It’s not even a career-ending offense to be young and dumb in journalism. As ludicrous as [Nick] Shirley’s current output is, he’s plainly got a certain aptitude for video reporting. In a different world — one set up to restrain his worst and dumbest instincts rather than to reward them — a guy like him could turn out to be a solid reporter. … Guys like Nick Shirley aren’t trying to join a publication, they’re picking up a camera and trying to go viral on their own. They have no safety net, no sounding board, no mentorship, no way to grow beyond what they’re doing this minute. All they have is the zero-sum game of the algorithm: Get noticed or die. … That’s what the ecosystem rewards, so we’re going to get more and more of it.” (01/14/26)
https://www.thebulwark.com/i/184544780/magas-young-dumb-future
- The Left [sic] Will Never Give Up Global Warming
Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lewis“Here is an interesting quote: ‘Snows are less frequent and less deep. They often do not lie below the mountains more than one, two, or three days and very rarely a week. They are remembered to be formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance. The elderly inform me that the earth used to be covered with snow about three months every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do now. This change … in the spring of the year is very fatal to fruits … I remember that when I was a small boy, say 60 years ago, snows were frequent and deep in every winter.’ Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Global warming is a reality. … the above quote is from Thomas Jefferson in the year 1799.” (01/14/25)
- Trump’s credit card interest cap is bad for the economy
Source: USA Today
by Dace Potas“Interest rates aren’t a number just pulled out of nowhere. Higher-risk clients need to pay higher interest rates in order for banks to be willing to take their business. Telling banks they can only charge so much interest will make them more selective in whom they lend to. Trump and other populists imagine that in passing legislation capping interest rates, all other functions of the credit card industry will remain the same, just with a lower rate for consumers. The reality is that if banks cannot offset accepting riskier clientele by charging them higher interest rates, they simply will not expose themselves to the risk that some people provide. This means that low-income Americans or those with shaky credit histories will have no chance at obtaining credit cards.” (01/14/26)
- Do Dems Have the Guts to Outflank Trump on Defense Industry Looting?
Source: Common Dreams
by Les Leopold“Trump has decided that the government should not give money to defense contractors who then reroute our tax dollars via stock buybacks to stockholders and executives. A stock buyback, for those unfamiliar, is when a corporation repurchases its own shares, thus boosting the share’s price, a legalized form of stock manipulation. CEOs, who are paid mostly in stock incentives, and large investors directly benefit from stock buybacks, and unlike with dividends, don’t have to pay taxes until they sell their shares. In the weapons industry, this isn’t news. Studies show that defense contractors spent three times more on dividends and stock buybacks than on capital investments needed to fulfill their contracts over the last decade. In Europe, it was the other way around with defense companies spending twice as much on capital investments compared to dividends. (They don’t do stock buybacks.)” (01/14/25)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/defense-industry-stock-buybacks
- The perils of naughty piccies by Grok
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall“We appear to be having one of those public fits of morality for which the British are famous. First there’s the observation that AI can be used to create naughty images. Yes, this does in fact mean all the different services, including the open source ones that can be run on a home PC, can be used to create such imagery. This is then focused in a two minute hate upon the evil of the day, X/Twitter and Grok. At which point X limits the ability to do so to paid accounts — paid accounts being those where the individual operating the account is a known individual. … Who is going to use a named and identified account to do something that’s illegal after all? At which point we’re told that this is ‘insulting.’ Solving the problem is insulting, eh?” (01/14/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-perils-of-naughty-piccies-by-grok
- Trump’s quest to kick America’s “Iraq War syndrome”
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Leah Schroeder“American forces invaded Panama in 1989 to capture Manuel Noriega, a former U.S. ally whose rule over Panama was marred by drug trafficking, corruption and human rights abuses. But experts point to another, perhaps just as critical goal: to cure the American public of ‘Vietnam syndrome,’ which has been described as a national malaise and aversion of foreign interventions in the wake of the failed Vietnam War. On both fronts, the operation was a success. With Noriega in custody and democracy restored, President George H. W. Bush could make the case that the U.S. military was back to peak performance and that force — including regime change — could be used effectively for good, commencing a new era of foreign interventionism in America. Nearly four decades and several disastrous conflicts later, the public has overwhelmingly become skeptical once more, especially after the 20 years of war following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.” (01/14/26)
- So, How’s the Occupation Going for You?
Source: Liberal Currents
by Taylor Carik“After being told that school was cancelled for two days because of ICE, my elementary school-age daughter replied, ‘That makes sense, it’s really slippery outside.’ I’ve told that anecdote a few times already this week, along with another very recent exchange from when the school reopened, albeit with heavy community safety patrolling by parents. After saying a quick hello at afterschool pick-up, followed by a pregnant pause in its truest elephant-in-the-city way, another parent asked me sardonically, ‘So, how’s the occupation going for you?’ These simple exchanges capture both the enormity of the experience of living under this new modern form of domestic occupation in Minneapolis-St. Paul and the day-to-dayness of having to navigate it.” (01/14/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/so-hows-the-occupation-going-for-you/
- The duo tapping a new Japanese-Korean beat
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff“For years, two of America’s closest allies, Japan and South Korea, have mostly marched to the beat of their own drums. As neighbors in northeast Asia, they have often cooperated. But the brutal history of Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean Peninsula was always an emotional backbeat preventing close ties. On Tuesday, after a bilateral summit, their leaders – who both took office last year – changed the tempo quite a bit. In a gesture purposely human rather than diplomatic, Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung sat down and played the drums together. They performed the song ‘Golden’ from the 2025 animated film ‘KPop Demon Hunters.’ Ms. Takaichi had once been a drummer in a heavy metal band while Mr. Lee had long dreamed of playing drums.” (01/14/25)
- A Distraction From the Epstein Files?
Source: The American Conservative
by Spencer Neale“Trump has successfully shifted the Overton Window away from elite sexual exploitation toward rotating foreign vendettas.” (01/14/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-distraction-from-the-epstein-files/
- The Political Orphanage
Source: The Political Orphanage
“The Friendship Recession and Cocktail Parties.” (01/14/26)
https://politicalorphanage.libsyn.com/the-friendship-recession-and-cocktail-parties
- Rising, 01/14/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave delivers radar on a proposed 5% wealth tax in California which he believes is not a great idea as it reportedly prompted at least six billionaires including Larry Page and Peter Thiel to cut ties with the state.” (01/14/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/5688423-rising-january-14-2026/
- The Illegal News with Sarah Longwell, 01/14/26
Source: The Bulwark
“Jack Smith Says He Had Trump Dead to Rights (w/ Asha Rangappa).” (01/14/26)
- Reason Interview: Colleen Shogan
Source: Reason
“Can We Save American History From Partisan Politics?” (01/14/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/01/14/can-we-save-american-history-from-partisan-politics/
- Underthrow Podcast, 01/14/26
Source: Underthrow
“Iran and Venezuela: A Tale of Two Regime Changes w/ James Harrigan.” (01/14/26)
- The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 01/14/26
Source: The Dispatch
“Ethics Rooted in Physics | Interview: Rebecca Newberger-Goldstein.” (01/14/26)
- Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock, 01/14/26
Source: Freedom’s Phoenix
“Patrick Wood (Technocracy.News) and Courtenay Turner (Freedom-Fighter; co-founder of Pirate Stream Media) on their newest book: The Final Betrayal: How Technocracy Destroyed America; new world order, communism, technocracy, AI, where are we now, predictions, etc.” (01/14/26)